In two parts because apparently I wrote too much for one comment:
Demonlover showed me the most anime pornography and torture pornography I have ever seen. It did more than that, too.
People generally like to ignore the existence of a very profitable business: porn. However, the only video rental stores that have outlasted Blockbuster in Omaha are the Family Video stores – and this is, honestly, because they have an “adult” room. Porn is keeping some rental video stores in business, because older men who either have no access to or proclivity for modern technology have an itch they need to scratch, too. I imagine that most times a film director sets out to make a movie about porn, they create something that has neither substance nor subtlety. Assayays, however, crafted a film that is seemingly about the porn industry, but is more about the general practice of working in the cutthroat moneymaking world.
Demonlover, like the other films this week, occurred mostly in spaces that communicate movement and temporariness. The very first scene is in an airplane, where clean-cut business people discuss, well, business. The small overhead televisions glow quietly as most of the passengers sleep. Many other parts of the film occur in cars and hotel rooms – and much of it in a trip to Tokyo. When Diane is in her apartment, audiences may wonder if it is a hotel room, because she so seldom seems to spend time there, at least according to the camera.
Kite writes in “Stop Again, Start Again,” “Because demonlover’s central players are corporations, those placeless entities, accountable to no one save their shareholders, which have been granted the legal status of “person” in much of the Western world” (149). I cannot better state the current condition of corporations in the modern world, but somehow reading this sentence chills me – even though I am aware of all of this. The world that is most frightening, in my opinion, is “faceless.” Bauman writes about this faceless power, and Americans can see it in the current election. Whatever, I’m not arguing for or against any candidate (except against Trump, I have morals), but a lot of the conversation this year has focused on where candidates receive their money. Are our candidates “bought”? We can wonder this because it is increasingly both possible and probable. Hillary Clinton won’t necessarily be the most powerful woman in the world; the Koch brothers will. The promise of this kind of power is what fuels the violent competition in Demonlover.
Kite also points out that Assayas is not necessarily (or likely) arguing, “Hey, look! Torture porn is hideous and harms people.” If that were his point, it would be a very obvious one to make. However, Assayas is showing us the depths of corporation, competition, and people learning how to make money off of a desire, no matter how morbid that desire may be.
As far as relationships, what little existed between Diane and Hervé did involve money, but more importantly, it involved power – which is so entwined with money, I guess you could say they’re the same thing. Things get murkier on the question of “Can you love without money?” here. These two have the money, but they are both corrupted, part of a web of intricate lies and deceptions in order to make that money. The only seemingly intimate relationships in this film are between people working together for the sake of money and power – Elise and Karen, for example.
The centrality of profit in the characters’ lives is further emphasized by the fact that we know next to nothing about their lives outside of their jobs. Karen mentions that her husband is doing business in Chicago. Diane plays tennis with a friend, making a remark about how she smokes too often (her personal vice, as this is partially a film about vices, like porn and power). Aside from that, as mentioned before, we do not often see the homes of the characters. We see Volf’s mansion, but this is a testament to his power rather than a glimpse into his personal life. All of the interactions, even Hervé’s sleeping with Kaori, are strictly business.
Demonlover also addresses the deconstruction of the solid life of training for a career and spending the next 40+ years using the same skills in the same job. This is most directly addressed when the people in Tokyo show Diane and Hervé that they’re moving from 2D animation to 3D, because it is what people are becoming accustomed to. This is only one of the many skills that have had to evolve, and this is just in one niche (but not that niche, as we come to find) job. This is also emphasized by the consistent presence of technology in the film.
Finally, it is worth noting the significance of the end. A young boy steals his father’s credit card to purchase torture porn, only to reveal what we could already infer: Diane is one of the featured products. He types in a request of what he would like to see, only to promptly pay no attention to his screen as he revisits what looks like a science project. Not only is technology so evolved and central to our lives that we surround ourselves with it, but it also often goes unnoticed. Consumers have access to kidnapped and drugged women through the advancement in protecting corners of the Internet with codes and secret procedures, but when they choose to engage, they can’t be bothered to pay attention. This technology is seemingly too commonplace.
Note: I wrote this in a moving car, which is very difficult, so apologies for any parts that don't make much sense.
After my initial reactions to Assayas' demonlover, which were that I need to give my life up and join the seminary, subsided, I started thinking about how obviously one of the director's intentions would be for this film to shock and disturb. But, perhaps, I don’t believe that the source of the majorly disturbing elements is quite as obvious as I initially thought, and I have no doubt that Assayas was conscious of the exact reasons that this film really gets under your skin. Yes, there was porn, torture porn, manga porn, and every other kind of porn in between littered throughout the entire film. However, we see porn and torture porn in entertainment all the time. Heck, almost all the media that we consume could be said to contain some objectively sexualized images in some way or another. The show Hannibal, about a cannibal serial killer, airs on NBC of all places, and most people at least kind of like Tarantino films and they keep making Saw movies. It’s not uncommon, and we’ve all been exposed to and maybe derived pleasure from graphic violence. Where demonlover gets uncomfortable is when it begins to transcend its story and act as a mirror held up to society; people do like this stuff, and it’s simultaneously fake, sterile, and painfully damaging to very real people. It’s ingrained into our society, casually accessible enough for a child to swipe his father’s credit card and explore his darkest fantasies in the comfort of his bedroom, and perhaps the most tangible way for some people to exercise their desire for control, a desire that Assayas might be arguing in this film outweighs any other desire.
Kaitlin already put it perhaps in the most eloquent way possible (in a moving car at that): this film explores people’s baser need to control, a need that is often most easily fulfilled when you have money. There’s little separating the two, and the comparison to politics is (sadly) spot on. Control, as is evident from the film, is commodified in our world. As the owner of the Hellfire Club notes, it’s a matter of supply and demand. People will pay for the ability to feel in control over other people. Control, both in the film and in a macro commentary of our world, is a thing that you buy. Elise controls her video games, a thing she bought, in her hotel room. Diane buys an adult film whenever she wants, also in a hotel (nod to Kaitlin again, hotels are very impermanent settings and are a large part of this film). Volf, Elaine, and everyone sitting in that meeting want control over other business through money. Hervé physically takes control over Diane in really the only display of obsessively needing control that doesn’t involve money (side note: so, so glad she shot him in the head, and also yes that means I myself directly was satisfied through violence).
Control is all over the film, and the film is all over the world, fitting in perfectly to our discussion of globalization and it’s sociocultural/political effects. This particular film highlights the terrifying consequences of a globalized world. It allows for businesses, in an effort to monopolize for power and increase profits, to interact with each other in a way that makes the distribution and creation of the disgusting things that this film shows, a lot, not only easy but also completely sterile and detached. Detachment, despite being more connected than every, comes up in the film quite a bit. Whether it’s watching porn or engaging in some sort of sexual activity, everyone feels quite detached in this film. When something almost happens between Diane and Hervé near the beginning of the film, neither looks particularly invested. This film also evokes some pretty massive anxiety that accompanies this detachment; characters constantly smoking cigarettes, the shaky camerawork, and the scratchy, industrial score all compliment these anxious feelings.
One last thing, as I forgot to mention globalization with respect to an insight that Jones makes that I think helps frame the question of who is responsible ultimately for material like torture porn. Jones writes that the question of "Who is responsible for all this?" comes up in the film. Unfortunately, though, "there's no longer a face to be found at the center of the maze" (148) to whom we could point our fingers and tell to stop this. As is illustrated by the way Diane just can't seem to get out of this downward spiral that leads to all the terrible things that happen to her, our interconnectedness has brought along a degree of anonymity that complicates responsibility. Everyone seems to have some sort of stake in the Demonlover and Hellfire Club sites, both financially and emotionally, that all contribute to keeping Diane in this "maze" that she can't escape. Even Elise, who I think we are led to believe is going to help her escape, ultimately gives her over to be tortured. And yet, we never really are given the idea that one single person is pulling all the strings; the problem runs so deep that it extends its roots to places all over the world.
After this past week's class discussions, I've made it a goal to be more conscious of directors' attitudes toward the people and ideas in their films. As such, my goal for this post will be to explore Assayas' attitudes toward corporate dealings, pornography, and commercialized torture/violence, while also identifying how he uses form to communicate these attitudes in demonlover (2002). Perhaps the best place to start is from a genre perspective. demonlover is a thriller, with many of the trappings we've come to expect from the genre - B. Kite's question of "who's responsible for all this?" (148), intrigue, backstabbing, violence, sex, car chases, eerie music, paranoia, etc. The goal of the commercial thriller is, well, to thrill the audience. demonlover certainly does that, as I found myself feeling uneasy already when Diane (Connie Nielsen) put drugs in Karen's (Dominique Reymond) drink and terrified when someone let Diane know via the note that they knew about the drugging. Early on, I found myself almost rooting for Diane who, from my personal moral perspective, is a completely reprehensible person. Assayas gives us the privilege of knowing about Diane's plan before anyone else does, making us complicit in the crime. It is as if Diane getting caught would also entail the viewer getting caught. This position is a strange one to be in, but it makes the film more thrilling. However, can a film with lots of "thrill" factor also effectively critique its subject matter? This question is one I return to often, especially when it comes to genre films. For example, will the viewer remember demonlover for its critique of pornography or for the edge-of-your-seat broken glass fight between Diane and Elaine (Gina Gershon)? Kite explores some possible answers to this question, pointing out that the audience most attracted to demonlover might be young men who are "basically the kid at the end of [the film], but if any of them felt at all 'implicated' by that scene they kept it to themselves - most of them loved [the film in the same way the loved the sadism of Haneke's Funny Games]" (153). Kite then brings up a follow-up question that I have long grappled with myself as a fan of horror movies: can a film depict and criticize torture/violence in a way that discomforts rather than titillates sadistic viewers?
Let's take a look at that question as it relates to demonlover, splitting it into two parts. First, at what points does the film paint torture/violence (especially of a sexual nature) as thrilling? Well, as I mentioned previously, the fight scene between Diane and Elaine is thrilling in many ways. One way in which it achieves this thrill is through dynamic sound, clever edits, and a resourceful use of props. When Diane breaks into the building, the sound is mostly quiet. All we can hear are the sounds she makes - breaking glass and stepping around, mostly. Then, when she's caught by Elaine, drone music kicks in along with lots of shrieking and bodily movement sounds. This dynamic shift in sound makes the fight all the more shocking and engrossing for the viewer. Similarly, the editing enhances the tension in a truly delightful, terrifying way by returning to the bloody handprint in the hallway as hotel guests walk by. Should any of them happen to see it, Diane would be found out, locked away, and done for good. It's truly a thrilling scene, violence and all. The second and opposite consideration we have to make, however, is whether Assayas deliberately chooses not to thrill the viewer during scenes involving torture and violence. The final scene Kite describes might fit the bill here, as it left me not at all thrilled, but rather, disgusted and horrified. It ends with the image of one of the tortured women from earlier looking through the computer screen at what seems to be either the teenage boy watching or us. We know she'll soon be tortured, as we learned in the scene where Diane went to the website. However, the effect of her looking for an elongated time period seems to implicate us in something terrible. As Assayas makes us complicit with Diane's crime at the beginning, so he makes us guilty of something worse at the end. The woman's look is a look of judgment, one we cannot look away from even though we want to deny our culpability. Accompanied by the drone music with what sounds like demons chanting (something straight out of a Karlheinz Stockhausen opera), the effect is truly unsettling. On some level, yes, it thrills in that it provokes a strong emotional reaction. But, on another level, it doesn't thrill in the blood-pumping-time-for-a-run sort of way; it thrills in the skin-crawling-need-to-take-a-shower sort of way.
So does genre benefit Assayas here? Or serve as a crutch? It certainly makes his film very watchable, and at times, even seems to celebrate violence by way of the reaction it triggers with viewers. But ultimately, it manages to make a much more disturbing statement in its final scene, even as it thrills. I'm reminded of what Diane says when she's caught browsing the torture porn website - that it doesn't "excite" her but rather "fascinates" her. Perhaps these attitudes toward violence are similar to Assayas', as he switches between moments of violent spectacle and those of repulsion.
Speaking, finally, to our course question, Kite frames it best: "[The fundamental paradox of pornography involves] the wish to be inside another while remaining forever locked out" (150). Assayas paints a world in which digital "intimacy" is entirely corporate, where love in the form of sexual desire can be accessed (remotely) if one possesses the financial resources to do so. The boy inputting his credit card to access the torture porn website is an example of using money in order to access "love." However, the boy also seems more focused on his science homework than on the "love" he's just purchased, as is evidenced by him looking away while the tortured woman is displayed on the screen. In other words, he fits Kite's paradox of porn, desiring intimacy while also enforcing distance. Money grants him both.
"It ends with the image of one of the tortured women from earlier looking through the computer screen at what seems to be either the teenage boy watching or us." It's Diane....
What the film shows well, I think, is how capital desires to flow, indeed: desires, and in the end "is" desire. Thus, can one love, or desire, without money or capital? If capital, today, is desire, then no....
There is a scene toward the end of Olivier Assayas’s film demonlover in which the characters Herve (Charles Berling) and Diane (Connie Nielson) meet in a restaurant where an uneasy tete-a-tete soon unfolds. The camera frames their faces and upper bodies as either of them speak, their dialogue offering freshly opened secrets and further obfuscations; yet there seem to be few gestures or facial expressions which can be usefully plucked from the ensuing dialogue to shed light on the characters’ metamorphosed relationship . . . So, what happens now that much of the intrigue of corporate espionage has been revealed between the two?
Assayas has used the genre of spy thriller to advance his film’s plot, and, in line with the genre, he leaves the audience wondering over the true intentions of both Diane and Hevre. There is, however, a single exchange in the above scene which lays bare a crucial theme of the film: Herve offers the line “You control everything you do”, to which Diane responds, “I’m not in control of anything”; what is thrust into the light, given Assayas’s choice to situate his film in the world of corporate greed (in particular an intrigue to control the distribution of Japanese pornography to the rest of the world), is a loss of agency among individuals in the wake of globalization.
Can there be love without money? demonlover affirms that in our contemporary world there cannot be. In the essay “Stop Stop Start Again”, B. Kite suggests that the film illustrates a world climate “without love or loyalty” (148).
The many characters of Assayas’s film certainly exhibit no loyalty save to whatever company can offer the most lucrative payoff. Diane has chosen to align herself with this state of the world, backed by company mangatronics, against rival, demonlover.com. But mangatronics gives her neither help nor protection when Diane is discovered to be a corporate spy (perhaps “thief” is more appropriate) by demonlover.com. In this respect, the individual becomes a commodity, or, if not a commodity, then a tool to be discarded once its usefulness has passed. A diagnosis of contemporary life from Zygmunt Bauman thus comes to mind: “Once competition replaces solidarity, individuals find themselves abandoned to their own” (68); there is no doubt that Diane has been abandoned. In the end, we find her ostensibly trapped as a sex slave for an internet torture site called Hellfire Club.
The Hellfire Club aspect of the film is an interesting one in the regard mentioned above; at one point in the film we see Diane perusing the site, coming to the link “Zora”, where we then see a woman in black latex, wearing a full mask, bound to a bed. Diane’s viewing is interrupted, but the film comes full circle when Diane is literally playing the role of Zora. The film cuts to an American household: we see a teenage boy steal his father’s credit card and enter the information on a computer. He is granted access to Hellfire Club. The boy clicks on “Zora”. What we see then is Diane, exhausted and hopeless, dressed in the clothing and under the conditions of the boy’s specified desire. In the scene with Herve, Diane’s observation on her state of agency was correct; the question, then, is to what degree are each of our lives controlled in the contemporary world?
Demonlover is different in genre and style than what we have previously seen in class. This movie can be categorized as a thriller and drama. There is murder, and suspense and sex that help the audience stay intrigued. This movie may be different in the fact that it is faster paced than the other movies but in the underlying tone it has many similar qualities. Money and Gender play a huge role in what Demonlover represents. This movie shows how women are represented in society and how they are objectified to the public. In the movie all the corporations are run by men, yes there are women leaders in the film but the fact is that these women all have bosses themselves and they are men. This is showing that the world is male dominated and that also the business world is too. Another example that is evident would have to be that in all the pornographic material women are the main focuses. On these sites women are being tortured and used as entertainment by Men and for men as seen in the last scene in which a boy purchase the porn. What caught my eye would have to be that women are making this deal and they never show any concern about what they are buying. The sites they are looking to purchase are in themselves immoral and horrifying and you never hear this from anyone on screen, this tells me the world has come to embrace sex and violence, this has become the social norm. Evidence would be in the last scene, when the boy is more focused on his science project about genetics rather than the violent porn he just purchased. The porn is playing in the background making one think that even this young adult has already seen ghastly things of this nature and that it is just another video. When watching this film something that I found odd would have to be when the businesswomen and men talk about other corporations. They never tell us the companies they work for they only tell us the nationality of them. They say that the Americans are coming, that the Asians want a meeting; they never use their names. I thought this may have something to do with how globalized violence and sex is, but I may be reaching.
To be honest, I am finding it very hard to blog about Assayas film "Demonlover" for a few reasons. First off I found it incredibly hard to watch. Not because of the subject matter but because of the way it was shot. Its constant use of loud noises, distorted sounds, unfocused scenes, shakey camera work, and constant zooming on flashing lights made me feel sick. I actually had to pause the movie during one of the club scenes because I was physically getting nauseous. The other reason it is hard for me to blog about this movie is because I truly did not understand it. I was so deeply confused at what exactly was going on by the end of the movie that it almost felt pointless to watch the ending. Besides all this, I do believe that I can make one parallel between this movie and the class theme "love without money". While we could count Diane's brief romance as an attempt at love, I do not really think it was. It is apparent to me that Diane's true love is for control and money itself. All the decisions she makes in the movie are to better herself or make her more money. She even goes as far as to kill people to attain what she wants. Diane's constant pursuit for power is her love. And can this love exist without "money". In this case it is almost like asking "can power exist without power?". Clearly we see that it cannot. From the time Diane was found out to be working with mangatronics and begins to have her power stripped from her, we know that she is doomed. This is why the movie ends in such a bad position for her. She cannot have her love of power without her power and therefore she is reduced to less than nothing being tortured on the internet for the world to see.
After watching the film Demonlover (2002), I was disturbed by the torture of the porn and the desire of this consuming the young cultures minds. It was shocking to see how many people are involved just for some website. At first, I was wondering where the film was taking me, but as it evolved, it was evident how corrupt cooperations are to meet consumers’ needs with the power of media. Cooperation’s make money off other people to meet the expectations of their viewer, without batting an eye. Demonlover explains how capitalism is corrupt in the porn industry, serving by any means necessary. Bauman “Once competition replaces solidarity, individuals find themselves abandoned to their own” (68) thus, the film shows two cooperation’s battling it out for the rights of a website. The two cooperation’s make spies obtain knowledge of the competitions plans. The vision of money ruling over people, for all the business, even the sex between the two characters is just to lust and desire. The demon of greed exploits money's power over love and what's right, and interestingly enough, it trickles down to hurting and torturing women for viewers needs. As for the use of the camera, creating transitions with the use of television demonstrates the lapse to the next scene. Then cuts to the character switching through channels with the reverse shot of the screen showing the switch. The film exploits the cruelty to the audience in a different fashion. It allows the characters to react to the disturbance off-screen then illustrates what the character is looking at on the computers. The jump cuts and flashbacks, from one character situation to the other allow the viewer catch up to the action, in a unique style. This film makes the audience think compared to most of the traditional plot giving the film, not to discredit any film by any means. Demonlovers is just a unique film that allows its audience to question what they are watching.
Honestly, I really enjoyed Demonlover, despite being very confused at the end of watching it. As far as I can tell, this was a movie about the ebb and flow of money and standing between two Internet companies and their employees. The use of espionage and the highlights of lust and greed really solidified this movie's theme of power, especially the power given to higher corporations.
The two corporations in Demonlover use money to completely manipulate their employees, and once the corporations really get to battling it out, they completely drop all concern for their employees in favor of concern for porn. Bauman said it best with, "Once competition replaces solidarity, individuals find themselves abandoned to their own" (68). It's clear that money /completely/ takes precedence over all else, even the individuals working for the corporations involved, and without money, there can be no love. Love, in this sense, can be equated to the porn that demonlover.com and Mangatronics provides. Without the proper money (and by extension, power), one cannot receive the facade of love that porn offers.
In the most literal sense of money equating to love, we can look at the final scene of the movie. Diane has been put into the position of "Zora" of The Hellfire Club. A teenage boy /literally/ buys her love/sexual services through the online BDSM porn site with his father's credit card. If he had not stolen the card from his father, the teenage boy would not have the power/money to access the love that a corporation is forcing "Zora" to offer.
The complete commercialization of "love" in Demonlover offers a critique on pornography for our contemporary world. I really enjoyed this movie, especially now after reading everyone's blog post about their own critiques for the film.
In Assayas’s film demonlover, it amazed me how emotionless and unfazed each character was to the content of their business. Through manga porn and women getting tortured, everything was conducted like regular business. However, this seemed like the point Assayas wanted to convey. Each of the characters seemingly “wears their bodies as they wear their faces” and “to open oneself emotionally is to risk losing control” (Jones 150). This is why Diane’s character appears cold and calculating to everyone. She keeps her emotions locked in to keep control, which we see in the first half of the film. In this half, we see Diane have all the control, since she is able to take Karen’s job, dictate Elise, and be a double agent between two companies. She believes she’s in control the entire time and Herve illustrates this aspect by expressing to Diane that she was “present and absent at the same time” while they slept together. But, after we see Diane getting caught by Elaine, the film takes a turn. Diane no longer has all the control, and the blood being cleaned up around her, while she is left in the room, marks this. In this instance, we can see that someone else holds the control. Instead of telling Elise what to do, Diane is now following Elise’s orders and we see her letting out some emotion, little by little. The breaking point, when Diane realizes that she had no control to begin with, came during Diane and Herve’s intimate night after their dinner. After Herve told her about his behind the scenes actions, we finally see Diane break down and shoot Herve. In this moment, her display of emotion signifies her loss of control. This could also be the reason why she lands in Hellfire and becomes a puppet for a teenager to control, because her amour that kept her emotions in tact and gave her control is stripped from her. This whole film also simulates pornography by “restaging that fundamental paradox” (Jones 150). As people watch porn, they want to be in it, but not actually participate in it, which Jones describes as our “wish to be inside another while remaining forever locked out” (Jones 150). Through the many sex scenes, we see how the characters are invested in sex without any emotions. They want something from these encounters, and an example of this is Diane, who wants control and tries to obtain it by sleeping with Herve. In porn, people are watching it to see their fantasies happen, just like how the boy describes what he wants to happen in Hellfire. However, the boy would never want to actively participate in these kinds of actions just like how Diane doesn’t want to let go of her emotions and lose all the control she has obtained. This film can also relate to the love and money question in this course. In this case, the money is the control Diane has over the situation and of others. With this type of wealth, she earned respect from others, which Herve repeatedly says throughout the film. The more wealth or control Diane receives, the more love she gets, which is represented as respect. However, once she loses her control, her respect from others is also lost. Diane goes from her corporate job to being a subject in Hellfire for teenage boys to torture. Hellfire completely strips Diane of her control and respect and reduces her to nothing but a fantasy.
OK, good post. I wonder, tho, what you make of the "fact" that Diane clearly seems to be intrigued by -- "into" -- what she sees of Hellfire on the screen (and arguably also the manga stuff).
In two parts because apparently I wrote too much for one comment:
ReplyDeleteDemonlover showed me the most anime pornography and torture pornography I have ever seen. It did more than that, too.
People generally like to ignore the existence of a very profitable business: porn. However, the only video rental stores that have outlasted Blockbuster in Omaha are the Family Video stores – and this is, honestly, because they have an “adult” room. Porn is keeping some rental video stores in business, because older men who either have no access to or proclivity for modern technology have an itch they need to scratch, too. I imagine that most times a film director sets out to make a movie about porn, they create something that has neither substance nor subtlety. Assayays, however, crafted a film that is seemingly about the porn industry, but is more about the general practice of working in the cutthroat moneymaking world.
Demonlover, like the other films this week, occurred mostly in spaces that communicate movement and temporariness. The very first scene is in an airplane, where clean-cut business people discuss, well, business. The small overhead televisions glow quietly as most of the passengers sleep. Many other parts of the film occur in cars and hotel rooms – and much of it in a trip to Tokyo. When Diane is in her apartment, audiences may wonder if it is a hotel room, because she so seldom seems to spend time there, at least according to the camera.
Kite writes in “Stop Again, Start Again,” “Because demonlover’s central players are corporations, those placeless entities, accountable to no one save their shareholders, which have been granted the legal status of “person” in much of the Western world” (149). I cannot better state the current condition of corporations in the modern world, but somehow reading this sentence chills me – even though I am aware of all of this. The world that is most frightening, in my opinion, is “faceless.” Bauman writes about this faceless power, and Americans can see it in the current election. Whatever, I’m not arguing for or against any candidate (except against Trump, I have morals), but a lot of the conversation this year has focused on where candidates receive their money. Are our candidates “bought”? We can wonder this because it is increasingly both possible and probable. Hillary Clinton won’t necessarily be the most powerful woman in the world; the Koch brothers will. The promise of this kind of power is what fuels the violent competition in Demonlover.
Kite also points out that Assayas is not necessarily (or likely) arguing, “Hey, look! Torture porn is hideous and harms people.” If that were his point, it would be a very obvious one to make. However, Assayas is showing us the depths of corporation, competition, and people learning how to make money off of a desire, no matter how morbid that desire may be.
DeleteAs far as relationships, what little existed between Diane and Hervé did involve money, but more importantly, it involved power – which is so entwined with money, I guess you could say they’re the same thing. Things get murkier on the question of “Can you love without money?” here. These two have the money, but they are both corrupted, part of a web of intricate lies and deceptions in order to make that money. The only seemingly intimate relationships in this film are between people working together for the sake of money and power – Elise and Karen, for example.
The centrality of profit in the characters’ lives is further emphasized by the fact that we know next to nothing about their lives outside of their jobs. Karen mentions that her husband is doing business in Chicago. Diane plays tennis with a friend, making a remark about how she smokes too often (her personal vice, as this is partially a film about vices, like porn and power). Aside from that, as mentioned before, we do not often see the homes of the characters. We see Volf’s mansion, but this is a testament to his power rather than a glimpse into his personal life. All of the interactions, even Hervé’s sleeping with Kaori, are strictly business.
Demonlover also addresses the deconstruction of the solid life of training for a career and spending the next 40+ years using the same skills in the same job. This is most directly addressed when the people in Tokyo show Diane and Hervé that they’re moving from 2D animation to 3D, because it is what people are becoming accustomed to. This is only one of the many skills that have had to evolve, and this is just in one niche (but not that niche, as we come to find) job. This is also emphasized by the consistent presence of technology in the film.
Finally, it is worth noting the significance of the end. A young boy steals his father’s credit card to purchase torture porn, only to reveal what we could already infer: Diane is one of the featured products. He types in a request of what he would like to see, only to promptly pay no attention to his screen as he revisits what looks like a science project. Not only is technology so evolved and central to our lives that we surround ourselves with it, but it also often goes unnoticed. Consumers have access to kidnapped and drugged women through the advancement in protecting corners of the Internet with codes and secret procedures, but when they choose to engage, they can’t be bothered to pay attention. This technology is seemingly too commonplace.
Note: I wrote this in a moving car, which is very difficult, so apologies for any parts that don't make much sense.
"Hillary Clinton won’t necessarily be the most powerful woman in the world; the Koch brothers will. "
DeleteLOL: r u saying the Koch bros will be in drag, or will transition .... ;)
After my initial reactions to Assayas' demonlover, which were that I need to give my life up and join the seminary, subsided, I started thinking about how obviously one of the director's intentions would be for this film to shock and disturb. But, perhaps, I don’t believe that the source of the majorly disturbing elements is quite as obvious as I initially thought, and I have no doubt that Assayas was conscious of the exact reasons that this film really gets under your skin. Yes, there was porn, torture porn, manga porn, and every other kind of porn in between littered throughout the entire film. However, we see porn and torture porn in entertainment all the time. Heck, almost all the media that we consume could be said to contain some objectively sexualized images in some way or another. The show Hannibal, about a cannibal serial killer, airs on NBC of all places, and most people at least kind of like Tarantino films and they keep making Saw movies. It’s not uncommon, and we’ve all been exposed to and maybe derived pleasure from graphic violence. Where demonlover gets uncomfortable is when it begins to transcend its story and act as a mirror held up to society; people do like this stuff, and it’s simultaneously fake, sterile, and painfully damaging to very real people. It’s ingrained into our society, casually accessible enough for a child to swipe his father’s credit card and explore his darkest fantasies in the comfort of his bedroom, and perhaps the most tangible way for some people to exercise their desire for control, a desire that Assayas might be arguing in this film outweighs any other desire.
ReplyDeleteKaitlin already put it perhaps in the most eloquent way possible (in a moving car at that): this film explores people’s baser need to control, a need that is often most easily fulfilled when you have money. There’s little separating the two, and the comparison to politics is (sadly) spot on. Control, as is evident from the film, is commodified in our world. As the owner of the Hellfire Club notes, it’s a matter of supply and demand. People will pay for the ability to feel in control over other people. Control, both in the film and in a macro commentary of our world, is a thing that you buy. Elise controls her video games, a thing she bought, in her hotel room. Diane buys an adult film whenever she wants, also in a hotel (nod to Kaitlin again, hotels are very impermanent settings and are a large part of this film). Volf, Elaine, and everyone sitting in that meeting want control over other business through money. Hervé physically takes control over Diane in really the only display of obsessively needing control that doesn’t involve money (side note: so, so glad she shot him in the head, and also yes that means I myself directly was satisfied through violence).
Control is all over the film, and the film is all over the world, fitting in perfectly to our discussion of globalization and it’s sociocultural/political effects. This particular film highlights the terrifying consequences of a globalized world. It allows for businesses, in an effort to monopolize for power and increase profits, to interact with each other in a way that makes the distribution and creation of the disgusting things that this film shows, a lot, not only easy but also completely sterile and detached. Detachment, despite being more connected than every, comes up in the film quite a bit. Whether it’s watching porn or engaging in some sort of sexual activity, everyone feels quite detached in this film. When something almost happens between Diane and Hervé near the beginning of the film, neither looks particularly invested. This film also evokes some pretty massive anxiety that accompanies this detachment; characters constantly smoking cigarettes, the shaky camerawork, and the scratchy, industrial score all compliment these anxious feelings.
One last thing, as I forgot to mention globalization with respect to an insight that Jones makes that I think helps frame the question of who is responsible ultimately for material like torture porn. Jones writes that the question of "Who is responsible for all this?" comes up in the film. Unfortunately, though, "there's no longer a face to be found at the center of the maze" (148) to whom we could point our fingers and tell to stop this. As is illustrated by the way Diane just can't seem to get out of this downward spiral that leads to all the terrible things that happen to her, our interconnectedness has brought along a degree of anonymity that complicates responsibility. Everyone seems to have some sort of stake in the Demonlover and Hellfire Club sites, both financially and emotionally, that all contribute to keeping Diane in this "maze" that she can't escape. Even Elise, who I think we are led to believe is going to help her escape, ultimately gives her over to be tortured. And yet, we never really are given the idea that one single person is pulling all the strings; the problem runs so deep that it extends its roots to places all over the world.
DeleteControl seems to be an important issue raised by the film. An interesting pair of very short essays on "control" are
Deletehttp://www.uib.no/sites/w3.uib.no/files/attachments/6._deleuze-control_and_becoming_0.pdf
https://cidadeinseguranca.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/deleuze_control.pdf
Control as the dominant contemporary form power takes....
After this past week's class discussions, I've made it a goal to be more conscious of directors' attitudes toward the people and ideas in their films. As such, my goal for this post will be to explore Assayas' attitudes toward corporate dealings, pornography, and commercialized torture/violence, while also identifying how he uses form to communicate these attitudes in demonlover (2002).
ReplyDeletePerhaps the best place to start is from a genre perspective. demonlover is a thriller, with many of the trappings we've come to expect from the genre - B. Kite's question of "who's responsible for all this?" (148), intrigue, backstabbing, violence, sex, car chases, eerie music, paranoia, etc. The goal of the commercial thriller is, well, to thrill the audience. demonlover certainly does that, as I found myself feeling uneasy already when Diane (Connie Nielsen) put drugs in Karen's (Dominique Reymond) drink and terrified when someone let Diane know via the note that they knew about the drugging. Early on, I found myself almost rooting for Diane who, from my personal moral perspective, is a completely reprehensible person. Assayas gives us the privilege of knowing about Diane's plan before anyone else does, making us complicit in the crime. It is as if Diane getting caught would also entail the viewer getting caught. This position is a strange one to be in, but it makes the film more thrilling. However, can a film with lots of "thrill" factor also effectively critique its subject matter? This question is one I return to often, especially when it comes to genre films. For example, will the viewer remember demonlover for its critique of pornography or for the edge-of-your-seat broken glass fight between Diane and Elaine (Gina Gershon)?
Kite explores some possible answers to this question, pointing out that the audience most attracted to demonlover might be young men who are "basically the kid at the end of [the film], but if any of them felt at all 'implicated' by that scene they kept it to themselves - most of them loved [the film in the same way the loved the sadism of Haneke's Funny Games]" (153). Kite then brings up a follow-up question that I have long grappled with myself as a fan of horror movies: can a film depict and criticize torture/violence in a way that discomforts rather than titillates sadistic viewers?
Let's take a look at that question as it relates to demonlover, splitting it into two parts. First, at what points does the film paint torture/violence (especially of a sexual nature) as thrilling? Well, as I mentioned previously, the fight scene between Diane and Elaine is thrilling in many ways. One way in which it achieves this thrill is through dynamic sound, clever edits, and a resourceful use of props. When Diane breaks into the building, the sound is mostly quiet. All we can hear are the sounds she makes - breaking glass and stepping around, mostly. Then, when she's caught by Elaine, drone music kicks in along with lots of shrieking and bodily movement sounds. This dynamic shift in sound makes the fight all the more shocking and engrossing for the viewer. Similarly, the editing enhances the tension in a truly delightful, terrifying way by returning to the bloody handprint in the hallway as hotel guests walk by. Should any of them happen to see it, Diane would be found out, locked away, and done for good. It's truly a thrilling scene, violence and all.
DeleteThe second and opposite consideration we have to make, however, is whether Assayas deliberately chooses not to thrill the viewer during scenes involving torture and violence. The final scene Kite describes might fit the bill here, as it left me not at all thrilled, but rather, disgusted and horrified. It ends with the image of one of the tortured women from earlier looking through the computer screen at what seems to be either the teenage boy watching or us. We know she'll soon be tortured, as we learned in the scene where Diane went to the website. However, the effect of her looking for an elongated time period seems to implicate us in something terrible. As Assayas makes us complicit with Diane's crime at the beginning, so he makes us guilty of something worse at the end. The woman's look is a look of judgment, one we cannot look away from even though we want to deny our culpability. Accompanied by the drone music with what sounds like demons chanting (something straight out of a Karlheinz Stockhausen opera), the effect is truly unsettling. On some level, yes, it thrills in that it provokes a strong emotional reaction. But, on another level, it doesn't thrill in the blood-pumping-time-for-a-run sort of way; it thrills in the skin-crawling-need-to-take-a-shower sort of way.
So does genre benefit Assayas here? Or serve as a crutch? It certainly makes his film very watchable, and at times, even seems to celebrate violence by way of the reaction it triggers with viewers. But ultimately, it manages to make a much more disturbing statement in its final scene, even as it thrills. I'm reminded of what Diane says when she's caught browsing the torture porn website - that it doesn't "excite" her but rather "fascinates" her. Perhaps these attitudes toward violence are similar to Assayas', as he switches between moments of violent spectacle and those of repulsion.
Speaking, finally, to our course question, Kite frames it best: "[The fundamental paradox of pornography involves] the wish to be inside another while remaining forever locked out" (150). Assayas paints a world in which digital "intimacy" is entirely corporate, where love in the form of sexual desire can be accessed (remotely) if one possesses the financial resources to do so. The boy inputting his credit card to access the torture porn website is an example of using money in order to access "love." However, the boy also seems more focused on his science homework than on the "love" he's just purchased, as is evidenced by him looking away while the tortured woman is displayed on the screen. In other words, he fits Kite's paradox of porn, desiring intimacy while also enforcing distance. Money grants him both.
DeleteVery good.
Delete"It ends with the image of one of the tortured women from earlier looking through the computer screen at what seems to be either the teenage boy watching or us." It's Diane....
What the film shows well, I think, is how capital desires to flow, indeed: desires, and in the end "is" desire. Thus, can one love, or desire, without money or capital? If capital, today, is desire, then no....
There is a scene toward the end of Olivier Assayas’s film demonlover in which the characters Herve (Charles Berling) and Diane (Connie Nielson) meet in a restaurant where an uneasy tete-a-tete soon unfolds. The camera frames their faces and upper bodies as either of them speak, their dialogue offering freshly opened secrets and further obfuscations; yet there seem to be few gestures or facial expressions which can be usefully plucked from the ensuing dialogue to shed light on the characters’ metamorphosed relationship . . . So, what happens now that much of the intrigue of corporate espionage has been revealed between the two?
ReplyDeleteAssayas has used the genre of spy thriller to advance his film’s plot, and, in line with the genre, he leaves the audience wondering over the true intentions of both Diane and Hevre. There is, however, a single exchange in the above scene which lays bare a crucial theme of the film: Herve offers the line “You control everything you do”, to which Diane responds, “I’m not in control of anything”; what is thrust into the light, given Assayas’s choice to situate his film in the world of corporate greed (in particular an intrigue to control the distribution of Japanese pornography to the rest of the world), is a loss of agency among individuals in the wake of globalization.
Can there be love without money? demonlover affirms that in our contemporary world there cannot be. In the essay “Stop Stop Start Again”, B. Kite suggests that the film illustrates a world climate “without love or loyalty” (148).
The many characters of Assayas’s film certainly exhibit no loyalty save to whatever company can offer the most lucrative payoff. Diane has chosen to align herself with this state of the world, backed by company mangatronics, against rival, demonlover.com. But mangatronics gives her neither help nor protection when Diane is discovered to be a corporate spy (perhaps “thief” is more appropriate) by demonlover.com. In this respect, the individual becomes a commodity, or, if not a commodity, then a tool to be discarded once its usefulness has passed. A diagnosis of contemporary life from Zygmunt Bauman thus comes to mind: “Once competition replaces solidarity, individuals find themselves abandoned to their own” (68); there is no doubt that Diane has been abandoned. In the end, we find her ostensibly trapped as a sex slave for an internet torture site called Hellfire Club.
The Hellfire Club aspect of the film is an interesting one in the regard mentioned above; at one point in the film we see Diane perusing the site, coming to the link “Zora”, where we then see a woman in black latex, wearing a full mask, bound to a bed. Diane’s viewing is interrupted, but the film comes full circle when Diane is literally playing the role of Zora. The film cuts to an American household: we see a teenage boy steal his father’s credit card and enter the information on a computer. He is granted access to Hellfire Club. The boy clicks on “Zora”. What we see then is Diane, exhausted and hopeless, dressed in the clothing and under the conditions of the boy’s specified desire. In the scene with Herve, Diane’s observation on her state of agency was correct; the question, then, is to what degree are each of our lives controlled in the contemporary world?
Demonlover is different in genre and style than what we have previously seen in class. This movie can be categorized as a thriller and drama. There is murder, and suspense and sex that help the audience stay intrigued. This movie may be different in the fact that it is faster paced than the other movies but in the underlying tone it has many similar qualities. Money and Gender play a huge role in what Demonlover represents. This movie shows how women are represented in society and how they are objectified to the public. In the movie all the corporations are run by men, yes there are women leaders in the film but the fact is that these women all have bosses themselves and they are men. This is showing that the world is male dominated and that also the business world is too. Another example that is evident would have to be that in all the pornographic material women are the main focuses. On these sites women are being tortured and used as entertainment by Men and for men as seen in the last scene in which a boy purchase the porn. What caught my eye would have to be that women are making this deal and they never show any concern about what they are buying. The sites they are looking to purchase are in themselves immoral and horrifying and you never hear this from anyone on screen, this tells me the world has come to embrace sex and violence, this has become the social norm. Evidence would be in the last scene, when the boy is more focused on his science project about genetics rather than the violent porn he just purchased. The porn is playing in the background making one think that even this young adult has already seen ghastly things of this nature and that it is just another video. When watching this film something that I found odd would have to be when the businesswomen and men talk about other corporations. They never tell us the companies they work for they only tell us the nationality of them. They say that the Americans are coming, that the Asians want a meeting; they never use their names. I thought this may have something to do with how globalized violence and sex is, but I may be reaching.
ReplyDeleteGood attention to the gender aspect of the film.
DeleteTo be honest, I am finding it very hard to blog about Assayas film "Demonlover" for a few reasons. First off I found it incredibly hard to watch. Not because of the subject matter but because of the way it was shot. Its constant use of loud noises, distorted sounds, unfocused scenes, shakey camera work, and constant zooming on flashing lights made me feel sick. I actually had to pause the movie during one of the club scenes because I was physically getting nauseous. The other reason it is hard for me to blog about this movie is because I truly did not understand it. I was so deeply confused at what exactly was going on by the end of the movie that it almost felt pointless to watch the ending. Besides all this, I do believe that I can make one parallel between this movie and the class theme "love without money". While we could count Diane's brief romance as an attempt at love, I do not really think it was. It is apparent to me that Diane's true love is for control and money itself. All the decisions she makes in the movie are to better herself or make her more money. She even goes as far as to kill people to attain what she wants. Diane's constant pursuit for power is her love. And can this love exist without "money". In this case it is almost like asking "can power exist without power?". Clearly we see that it cannot. From the time Diane was found out to be working with mangatronics and begins to have her power stripped from her, we know that she is doomed. This is why the movie ends in such a bad position for her. She cannot have her love of power without her power and therefore she is reduced to less than nothing being tortured on the internet for the world to see.
ReplyDeleteAfter watching the film Demonlover (2002), I was disturbed by the torture of the porn and the desire of this consuming the young cultures minds. It was shocking to see how many people are involved just for some website. At first, I was wondering where the film was taking me, but as it evolved, it was evident how corrupt cooperations are to meet consumers’ needs with the power of media.
ReplyDeleteCooperation’s make money off other people to meet the expectations of their viewer, without batting an eye. Demonlover explains how capitalism is corrupt in the porn industry, serving by any means necessary. Bauman “Once competition replaces solidarity, individuals find themselves abandoned to their own” (68) thus, the film shows two cooperation’s battling it out for the rights of a website. The two cooperation’s make spies obtain knowledge of the competitions plans. The vision of money ruling over people, for all the business, even the sex between the two characters is just to lust and desire. The demon of greed exploits money's power over love and what's right, and interestingly enough, it trickles down to hurting and torturing women for viewers needs.
As for the use of the camera, creating transitions with the use of television demonstrates the lapse to the next scene. Then cuts to the character switching through channels with the reverse shot of the screen showing the switch. The film exploits the cruelty to the audience in a different fashion. It allows the characters to react to the disturbance off-screen then illustrates what the character is looking at on the computers. The jump cuts and flashbacks, from one character situation to the other allow the viewer catch up to the action, in a unique style. This film makes the audience think compared to most of the traditional plot giving the film, not to discredit any film by any means. Demonlovers is just a unique film that allows its audience to question what they are watching.
Honestly, I really enjoyed Demonlover, despite being very confused at the end of watching it. As far as I can tell, this was a movie about the ebb and flow of money and standing between two Internet companies and their employees. The use of espionage and the highlights of lust and greed really solidified this movie's theme of power, especially the power given to higher corporations.
ReplyDeleteThe two corporations in Demonlover use money to completely manipulate their employees, and once the corporations really get to battling it out, they completely drop all concern for their employees in favor of concern for porn. Bauman said it best with, "Once competition replaces solidarity, individuals find themselves abandoned to their own" (68). It's clear that money /completely/ takes precedence over all else, even the individuals working for the corporations involved, and without money, there can be no love. Love, in this sense, can be equated to the porn that demonlover.com and Mangatronics provides. Without the proper money (and by extension, power), one cannot receive the facade of love that porn offers.
In the most literal sense of money equating to love, we can look at the final scene of the movie. Diane has been put into the position of "Zora" of The Hellfire Club. A teenage boy /literally/ buys her love/sexual services through the online BDSM porn site with his father's credit card. If he had not stolen the card from his father, the teenage boy would not have the power/money to access the love that a corporation is forcing "Zora" to offer.
The complete commercialization of "love" in Demonlover offers a critique on pornography for our contemporary world. I really enjoyed this movie, especially now after reading everyone's blog post about their own critiques for the film.
In Assayas’s film demonlover, it amazed me how emotionless and unfazed each character was to the content of their business. Through manga porn and women getting tortured, everything was conducted like regular business. However, this seemed like the point Assayas wanted to convey. Each of the characters seemingly “wears their bodies as they wear their faces” and “to open oneself emotionally is to risk losing control” (Jones 150). This is why Diane’s character appears cold and calculating to everyone. She keeps her emotions locked in to keep control, which we see in the first half of the film. In this half, we see Diane have all the control, since she is able to take Karen’s job, dictate Elise, and be a double agent between two companies. She believes she’s in control the entire time and Herve illustrates this aspect by expressing to Diane that she was “present and absent at the same time” while they slept together. But, after we see Diane getting caught by Elaine, the film takes a turn. Diane no longer has all the control, and the blood being cleaned up around her, while she is left in the room, marks this. In this instance, we can see that someone else holds the control. Instead of telling Elise what to do, Diane is now following Elise’s orders and we see her letting out some emotion, little by little. The breaking point, when Diane realizes that she had no control to begin with, came during Diane and Herve’s intimate night after their dinner. After Herve told her about his behind the scenes actions, we finally see Diane break down and shoot Herve. In this moment, her display of emotion signifies her loss of control. This could also be the reason why she lands in Hellfire and becomes a puppet for a teenager to control, because her amour that kept her emotions in tact and gave her control is stripped from her.
ReplyDeleteThis whole film also simulates pornography by “restaging that fundamental paradox” (Jones 150). As people watch porn, they want to be in it, but not actually participate in it, which Jones describes as our “wish to be inside another while remaining forever locked out” (Jones 150). Through the many sex scenes, we see how the characters are invested in sex without any emotions. They want something from these encounters, and an example of this is Diane, who wants control and tries to obtain it by sleeping with Herve. In porn, people are watching it to see their fantasies happen, just like how the boy describes what he wants to happen in Hellfire. However, the boy would never want to actively participate in these kinds of actions just like how Diane doesn’t want to let go of her emotions and lose all the control she has obtained.
This film can also relate to the love and money question in this course. In this case, the money is the control Diane has over the situation and of others. With this type of wealth, she earned respect from others, which Herve repeatedly says throughout the film. The more wealth or control Diane receives, the more love she gets, which is represented as respect. However, once she loses her control, her respect from others is also lost. Diane goes from her corporate job to being a subject in Hellfire for teenage boys to torture. Hellfire completely strips Diane of her control and respect and reduces her to nothing but a fantasy.
OK, good post. I wonder, tho, what you make of the "fact" that Diane clearly seems to be intrigued by -- "into" -- what she sees of Hellfire on the screen (and arguably also the manga stuff).
ReplyDelete